Craptacular, craptacular!
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Director: Chris Columbus *dear god*
Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Maggie Smith, Kenneth Branagh, Richard Harris
2002
Oh dear. The second Harry Potter film. Can we all just pretend this film doesn’t exist and just skip from the first somewhat charming but a little boring Harry Potter movie to the third amazingly awesome and fantastical Harry Potter movie? It would make life better, I promise.
No?
We have to talk about the second one?
If we must.
This movie is 161 minutes. ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY ONE MINUTES. You know what movie does NOT need to be 161 minutes? How about this one? How about any generic summer action blockbuster? (Transformers and Pirates of the Caribbean, I’m looking at you!) (oh, and yes, haters, I know that Chamber of Secrets didn’t come out in the summer, I’m just trying to make a point.) It’s too much. The whole thing. It’s bloated, it drags, and it feels water-logged, a comparison helped along by the many puddles everywhere. The script - the starting place of this overlong mess - tries too hard to be true to Rowling’s source material. I suppose you can’t wholly blame the scriptwriters. Pottermania was riding an all time high, and they probably thought that they would be crucified if they dared to change more than the tiniest detail, or remove more than the smallest half sentence. All this makes for a terrifically tedious movie. Too much exposition, not enough action. The duel scene is unnecessarily long. Do we really need a full scene in the greenhouses? Quidditch… yet again… Does Tom Riddle really need his entire Evil Speech of Evil (thanks, Leverage!) in his best Bond-villain-esque manner? No. We don’t. What makes a good book and what makes a good movie are two very different things. Everyone involved in Chamber of Secrets had yet to figure that out. Clearly.
The child acting is utterly laughable. It is painful watching Daniel Radcliffe stumble and stutter his way through puberty and voice cracks. He somewhat improves over the course of the series, but really, he’s not very good here. There’s no subtlety, no nuance… no skill. Rupert Grint has little more to do than look confused all the time, and Emma Watson is barely any better. Tom Felton, presented with more than just a word or two to spit out as he had in the first film, even has trouble trying to put together a convincing sentence. Am I being too hard on them? Perhaps. I certainly wouldn’t want my pubescent years committed to film. Then again, I wasn’t being paid obscene amounts of money for it. I’ve seen far more convincing child actors, and it’s just bothersome that they’re not here. I will say I believe all three main child actors improve throughout the films… I just wish they had improved a little earlier to make this film a little better.
Yeah, I’m ragging on this film an awful lot, and, to be fair, there are a number of bright spots. It wouldn’t be right to not include these in the review.
Kenneth. Ruddy. Branagh.
In my opinion, Branagh is the undisputable high spot of the film. It’s difficult to say if it’s because Branagh does an amazing job acting or if JK Rowling wrote such an extraordinary character that Branagh didn’t have to work as hard. Either way, Gilderoy Lockhart breathes life into the film in every scene, saving what is otherwise a dull and uninteresting flick. His smile, his smarmy charm, his bright turquoise robes, his pompadour hairstyle… really, what a brilliant character, and Branagh takes him all the way, making no apologies, not afraid of looking foolish. The scene where he walks down the staircase to his class, looks in the painting at himself painting a picture of himself is truly a favorite. I can’t stop giggling. Later, in the Dueling Club sequence where the giddily excited Lockhart fights Alan Rickman’s bored beyond belief Professor Snape, the contrast between the two brings some much needed levity to the lagging movie. I always found it amusing that my favorite costume drama couple, Kenneth Branagh and Emma Thompson (I seriously cried the day I found out they were getting divorced) both play two of the most embarrassingly idiotic characters in the Potter film franchise.
Alright, alright, so Branagh is awesome and hysterical as Lockhart, but what else? Jason Isaacs typecasts himself into always playing vicious bad guys with his More Evil Than Satan two scenes as Lucius Malfoy, Draco’s evil dad. I love a good villain, and Isaacs makes Malfoy senior an awesome villain - even if he doesn’t have much more to do than walk around and sneer at Harry Potter. Mark Williams makes his first entrance as Arthur Weasley, a much beloved character in our household. My husband loves Mr. Weasley, and I enjoy how much gentle humor they give his character in the movies. Lovable, caring, and utterly clueless, his deadpan delivery when he turns to ask Harry who he is over breakfast is enchanting.
Once again, the special effects aren’t very special, not aging well. The computer-generated serpent of Slytherin looks fake, and in Harry’s final fight sequence, I caught myself thinking “this shot was CG… this shot was green screen… this shot was giant mouth prop… this shot was also CG.” The whole point of special effects is not to be noticed, to be fluid with the film. Needless to say, Chamber of Secrets fails horribly at that. The musical score of the film barely goes beyond John Williams original score for the first film, and falls flat in the process.
Perhaps this is all unjust criticism of Chamber of Secrets. Perhaps I am unfairly comparing it to the superior Potter sequels that follow. Should it be held up to Prisoner of Azkaban or Order of the Phoenix, or should it simply be judged on its own? Unfortunately, whenever you are talking film franchises, especially one as prolific and successful as the Harry Potter films, such comparisons are inevitable. Compared to its successors, Chamber of Secrets is tedious and dull. My husband fell asleep in the theaters when we originally saw it back in 2002, and has yet to actually watch the entire thing. (I keep telling him it’s really unnecessary.) Was Chamber of Secrets the worst film ever made? Hardly. Was it the worst Harry Potter film ever made? Yes. Yes it was.